Thursday, September 25, 2008

Raspberry-Lime Muffins

Every time I bake a batch of muffins, I always say that it will be my final batch. It's not because they are just too delicious that I can't stop eating one after another, but instead it is the other way around. I would like to believe that I'm just not a muffin person, but I think it has more to do with my folding technique. The weird part is that my quick breads turn out fine and they use essentially the same 'dump the wet into dry and fold until combined' method. My problem is everytime I make actual muffins vs quick breads I get so overly cautious with overmixing that I end up undermixing. With almost every batch I bake, there is always one unlucky person who ends up biting into a flour pocket and trust me.. that is embarassing!

After seeing Kevin from Closet Cooking post on raspberry lime muffins, I just had to make them even though I only had frozen berries. Using the base of CI's best blueberry muffin recipe, I swapped the raspberries for the blueberries and added lime zest only. I didn't use lime juice in case the added acidity might throw the balance off and I end up with an overly large crumb. For the first time ever, I used oil instead of butter in my muffins to see if it would make a difference on the texture. I enjoyed the extra moisture the oil provided and suprisingly I didn't really miss the butter flavour. The best part was that they weren't as crumbly or dry the next day, but it's nothing 15 seconds in the microwave can't fix.

Lately, my non stick pans havn't been as good and I actually had to grease my muffin tin. A good tip I learned from Nigella is to save the butter wrappers in the fridge and use them to grease the pan before throwing them out. I find this cleaner, faster, easier and it saves you butter! The only thing is it tends to leave a thinner film of butter than using your fingers so you need to make sure it is greased well enough.

Best Blueberry Muffin RecipeI substituted:* oil for the butter* raspberries for the blueberries* added the zest of one lime (this was not enough and will add more next time)

17 comments:

I was eyeing Kevin's muffins too but raspberries are too expensive for everyday muffins :( I like the ingenuity in yours, and I didn't realise that over-acidity could contribute to overly large crumbs.

Thank you for the tip!

By the way, I also want to say that I love your blog, and I've given you an award over at mine.

Would you believe I'm baking banana (yes, again!) muffins right now - it's the same old recipe but this time I added in soft toffee chunks and pecans. Hope they turn out okay.

These look delicious! Now that there is a little chill in the morning air around here (just the morning air, and just a little chill) I find myself thinking "muffins" more often. I'm adding this one to my "must make" list!

hi stephfirst of all thanks for passing by my blog....well i use fruit cakes so that multi-tier cakes have good support..yes doing MBA and statistics is no fun, i agree but we chose, so have to do isn't it ? Hey loved your rasberry lime muffins and i see there has no under or over addition of the ingredinets...liked it and alos yopur tip of butter wrapper ...thanks.

Hmm can you pretend you are making a quick bread and at the last minute put the batter in the muffin pan? That might solve your undermixing problem ;)

I used to make muffins all the time last year at school. Depending on the ingredients, they can be a somewhat healthy breakfast snack (ok prob not but I like to think that!) I know we are making pumpkin muffins in a few weeks for TwD. Maybe that'll get me back into my muffin kick.

Raspberry and lime is a great combo, and these look delicious!! I only ever use frozen raspberries when baking because I actually prefer them. I toss them with a little flour so they don't sink to the bottom, and they hold up beautfully and are much cheaper than fresh (which means I get to use them more often!).